


Tell Me You Love Me, Come Back and Haunt Me

by grandfatherclock



Series: Widojest Week 2019 [5]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Community: widojest love, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-14
Updated: 2019-07-14
Packaged: 2020-06-28 09:57:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19809934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grandfatherclock/pseuds/grandfatherclock
Summary: “Are you secretly in love withmeeee?”





	Tell Me You Love Me, Come Back and Haunt Me

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from The Scientist by Coldplay.

“Are you secretly in love with _meeee_?” Jester Lavorre’s eyes are bright and she’s blinking quickly—blinking something _back_ —and her strong freckled arms are holding him with her firm grip. The soft breeze makes the strands of her hair run in perfect patterns behind her, and Caleb watches the way her bun slowly loosens with hazy eyes. Everything feels a little blurry. His feet drag against the dirt, and Jester tightens her hold on him. “Don’t _worry_ , Cayleb, just lean onto me, _okay_?” They’re so close he can feel her chest rise and fall from her breathing. It’s uneven, a little sputtering.

_Lovely_ , Caleb thinks, eyes tracing over the curves of her face. He coughs, and Jester’s eyebrows furrow in worry at the blood staining the ground. Caleb’s red all over, he realizes—blood is staining his faded white shirt from his shoulder wound, and the right leg of his trousers is fucking _damp_ from that gash. “Hmmm, Lavorre?” He can’t think straight, and he’s _staining_ Jester’s pretty dress with his bloodied hands. Caleb tries to pull away and she doesn’t allow him, her arm curling around his waist protectively. “I can’t… I don’t…” He sounds confused, more so than he intended.

“I always wanted to _know_ ,” Jester says, her voice forcibly light. Her eyes flick down worriedly to him, and Caleb meets her gaze, her eyes still blinking rapidly. The sky is this cold blue, and the sun’s light is jarring, cascading in sharp angles along her face. It doesn’t make her look any less divine—her warmth is only more illuminated by the harshness around them. “Can you tell me if you _love_ me, Cayleb?” Jester bites the inside of her cheek. Her holy symbol hangs along her waist, tied to her belt, and she grips it for a moment, her knuckles whitening before she lets go. Her magic ran out earlier today.

All Caleb can think about is how welcome her cold touch is to the sticky warmth he’s feeling along his shoulder. He knows in the abstract what she’s trying to do—keep him calm, distract him from the fact that he’s dying. They ran out of bandages, and he knows Beau is searching frantically for the local doctor, searching for what Jester needs to heal him up to survive the night. He knows from the change in atmosphere that they’re no longer in the street, that they’re now in a tavern. He knows from how the wood impacts against his dragging feet that Jester is dragging him up a staircase. He knows from feeling pillows against his head and a mattress underneath his body that she found them a room.

All Caleb can _fucking_ think about is her welcome touch. “B-blueberry,” he murmurs, hating how the word trembling through his lips.

Jester reaches out and grabs his bloodied hands with her own. He stares with remorse at the red staining her freckled blue hands. They’re soft, unlike his own. They aren’t charred and calloused, unlike his own. He selfishly intertwines his fingers with hers, and she leans close, smiling at him. “Ja, Cayleb?” She gives him a teasing smile, and Caleb realizes she might be blinking back tears.

He reaches out and runs a hand over her cheek, brushing away the wetness with his ruined thumb. She leans into his touch, and he puts his hand to the side of her face, ruining her further. _Selfish_ , he thinks, mildly disgusted with himself. _Leaving marks of yourself on her._ Jester bursts into tears, and begins to grab at cloth, pulling off his coat and trying to cover his wound. She holds one of his hands all the while, and he tightens his grip on hers. “… Ja,” he mumbles, feeling his thoughts begin to bleed into each other.

_Ja?_ Jester gives him a weak smile, and her breathing is uneven. _Scheisse_ , what’s he _doing_ to her? Why is he… he can’t… she can’t cry for him, _please, blueberry, bitte, don’t cry for me, I’m not… I’m really not…_

_I will_ , she says, her voice breaking. _Maybe for once I’ll cry, Caleb Widogast_. Jester stares at him, and grabbing for her holy symbol. She begins to pray in other language, the tears staining her cheeks and running over the blood he’s left on her. Caleb wishes he could show her the creature shifting in his skin right now, that monster recoiling at the grace she’s begging her god shows him.

_Oh, she loves you_ , he hears a soft voice say in his ear.

It’s the _last_ thing he hears. One moment he feels the mattress, and the next, there’s light, light, _light_ , and his mother’s smile, and his father’s slight half-laugh, and Frumpkin sitting on the porch dejectedly as he leaves for school, and then _more_ fucking light. He wants to beg for forgiveness, but his words stumble over each other, and then he no longer has a mouth, no longer has a _body_ , he’s nothing but light, and—and _then—_

**Author's Note:**

> I was just guessing at numbers and figures  
> Pulling your puzzles apart  
> Questions of science, science and progress  
> Do not speak as loud as my heart
> 
> —Coldplay, The Scientist


End file.
